ICF Newsletter

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Thursday April 29, 2010 Issue 03

Hello and a very warm welcome to the third edition of the Investment Climate Facility for Africa’s (ICF) quarterly newsletter.

We commend African governments for their commitment and their willingness to improve the investment climates in their countries. It is our hope that the private sector will become more involved in its efforts to improve the investment climate as well as in investing in countries whose business environments have improved.

This first newsletter of the year focuses on the achievements in improving judicial systems. Confidence in legal systems has a very real and direct impact on investor confidence. An assurance that court room situations will be dealt with fairly, efficiently and transparently creates a strong platform for economic growth because it acts as a catalyst of increased investor activity and allows smaller businesses to have easier access to credit and expand. Details on these judicial projects can be found below.

Finally, ICF will host its inaugural Investment Climate Summit on 3rd and 4th May 2010, in Dar es Salaam. The Summit will be the first of a series of events focused on addressing the fundamentals which are so critical to the creation of more conducive business environments across the African continent. These events will enable key decision makers and practitioners from both the public and private sector to discuss measures to be taken to improve the investment climate in Africa.

Best wishes for the second quarter of 2010.

Omari Issa
Chief Executive Officer, ICF

IN THIS ISSUE

ICF Announces Investment Climate Summit in Tanzania
Zambian Judiciary Goes Digital
Tanzania’s Judiciary Goes Digital

ALSO THIS MONTH

ICF On The Road

ICF representatives continue to attend high level events with a view to increasing demand for investment climate improvements.

• 10-11 February 2010, London, UK - Business Council for Africa event

• 26 March 2010, Lusaka, Zambia – ICF announced completion of phase one of the Zambia Judiciary project

• 30 March 2010, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania – Press conference to officially launch Investment Climate Summit. Further regional investment Summits will be held during 2010

Investment Climate Facts

• Faced with high costs, and a sense that justice is not always delivered, it is estimated that approximately 80% of people are thought to turn to informal institutions when seeking justice in Africa

• It takes an average of 429 days and nine procedures to register a business in Africa, a year longer and a third more procedures than in OECD countries

• Complying with import and export procedures takes at least three times longer and costs twice as much in sub-Saharan Africa than in the developed world

• The global trade in fake goods has grown 10,000% in the last two decades, to an estimated $600 billion each year and Africa is the main transit route for counterfeits to Europe

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NEWS

ICF Announces Investment Climate Summit in Tanzania

March 2010 saw ICF officially announce its Investment Climate Summit, which will take place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on 3-4 May 2010. The Summit will bring together African Presidents, senior Government officials and high level executives from Africa’s business and financial landscape to share best practice on improving investment climates and to establish a collaborative action plan to improve Africa’s investment climate.

With African governments making continuous progress on improving their domestic investment climates the Summit will stress the importance of engaging the private sector to help identify priorities for ICF intervention, as well as encourage private enterprises to respond to measures that are being taken.

Delegates will explore four key business themes: business registration and licensing; commercial justice; anti-counterfeiting and piracy; and customs and taxation. With a focus on the sharing of project learnings and achievements, delegates will be invited to share best practice with a view to applying learnings from existing ICF projects to new projects and new countries.

The Summit is intended to act as a platform to put investment climate improvements at the top of Africa’s growth strategy agenda. It will be followed up by a series of regional summits which will maintain the focus on getting the fundamentals right to encourage the growth of healthier investment climates across the continent.

Zambian Judiciary Goes Digital

ICF has supported Zambia’s Judiciary to automate court proceedings, improve case management and train courtroom staff. By automating the recording of court proceedings with digital court recording equipment, cases can now be captured and followed in real time by the Judge, lawyers, press and the public. The automation will reduce time spent recording, increase the number of cases completed and remove the likelihood of tampering with evidence.

Photo caption: Supreme Court in Lusaka

Following the completion of the first phase, each registry is now equipped with a case management system that will enhance the security and integrity of documents and thus remove the potential threat of corruption. Fourteen judges and 38 support staff have been trained in multiple areas including record management, electronic research methods and information security. Ten court reporters are also being trained.

Tanzania’s Judiciary Goes Digital

The Tanzanian Judiciary modernisation project is progressing well and is now 95% complete. Similar to the aforementioned Zambian project, the project in Tanzania aims to modernise judicial operations and increase their capacity by improving the efficiency and speed of case handling. The project involves the migration of existing judicial systems from manual to electronic formats, and overall digitalisation.

Photo caption: Commercial Court in Dar es Salaam

Digital recording equipment has been introduced to assist judges when writing and recording evidence in longhand. Judges and support staff, including transcribers, court reporters and ICT administrators, have been given special training to enable them to use the new systems. Forty judges and 35 registrars have also been trained to use the new digital equipment and accurate transcription systems at ESAMI in Arusha , Tanzania.

ICF and Government of Mauritius Announce Project to Modernise Mauritian JudiciaryEnter your title

The third and final judicial project in this newsletter is a new project based in Mauritius. The project, which was formally launched at the beginning of March, will modernise the Mauritian Judiciary’s existing infrastructure over a two year period by simplifying and automating the settlement process. In doing so, time and costs involved with lodging commercial cases on the island will be significantly reduced.

The project will streamline judicial processes by establishing a Mediation Division and a Fast Track Commercial Court. Systems will be automated and staff trained to increase the capacity to process commercial cases and reduce operational costs. Information and communications technology improvements will modernise the court’s recording processes – as was the case in Zambia and Tanzania, currently all cases are recorded manually with significant time and cost implications.

Automating the process will improve efficiency and reduce data loss, which will in turn improve the credibility of the court statistics. With ICF support, it is hoped the duration of a full trial for commercial cases will be reduced from 180 days to a maximum of 100 days.

Burkina Faso’s Land and Business Registration Project Reaches New Milestones

Finally, ICF is delighted to announce that its project in partnership with the Government of Burkina Faso, to improve land and business registration and the issuing of construction licences (mentioned in the last newsletter), is celebrating tangible successes. Four One Stop Shops that are streamlining business registration processes are now operational. As a result, the number of procedures needed to register a business has been reduced from 13 to four, and costs have been reduced by 57%.

Land registration systems have also been streamlined and a more reliable electronic database for land titles is stimulating the land market and facilitating access to credit. The number of days taken to transfer property has been reduced from 182 to just 45, the cost has been reduced to 9% of revenue/per capita and the number of procedures involved in property transfers has also been reduced from eight to just three.